Warrantless Spying Report Signals Expansion of Domestic Surveillance
What they're not telling you: Spying Report Signals Expansion of Surveillance The FBI has been conducting systematic surveillance of Americans using Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a legal mechanism designed exclusively for foreign intelligence collection—with documented internal noncompliance rates that the agency itself acknowledges but continues to operate without meaningful statutory restraint. The American Prospect's reporting draws on government documents showing that the FBI's use of Section 702 authority has expanded far beyond its statutory mandate. Section 702, enacted as part of the 2008 FISA amendments, permits the National Security Agency and FBI to conduct surveillance without individualized warrants when targeting foreign persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States.
What the Documents Show
The law explicitly prohibits targeting U.S. persons—but the documents reveal systematic "backdoor" searches in which analysts query the vast reservoir of incidentally collected American communications using U.S. person identifiers without obtaining warrants first. The scope becomes concrete when examining what the documents show: FBI analysts conducted approximately 3.4 million warrantless queries of Section 702 databases in 2021 alone, according to figures the agency itself reported to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. These queries are not conducted as part of predefined foreign intelligence investigations.
Follow the Money
Rather, agents submit names of U.S. persons into the NSA's PRISM and Upstream collection systems—database infrastructure that vacuums communications from major internet backbone providers and corporate servers—and retrieve results without judicial approval. The agency has categorized roughly 40 percent of these queries as lacking sufficient legal predicate under the "substantial likelihood" standard even FBI policy requires. What distinguishes this from previous NSA surveillance disclosures is the institutional response: the FBI has known about these compliance failures for years. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence submitted reports to Congress documenting the violations. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued opinions noting the pattern.
What Else We Know
And the FBI's response, according to the Prospect's source material, has been incremental procedural adjustments rather than systemic reform—software warnings, training seminars, and revised query guidelines that remain subordinate to the operational urgency of conducting the searches themselves. The corporate angle receives insufficient attention in mainstream coverage. The surveillance infrastructure depends entirely on the cooperation of telecommunications carriers and internet service providers who retain copies of communications flowing through their networks. Companies including AT&T, Verizon, and major cloud providers have contractual arrangements with the NSA permitting bulk access to metadata and content. These firms face no statutory obligation to disclose to customers that their communications are being searched via Section 702, nor do they face liability for permitting warrantless access. The arrangement essentially privatizes the frontline mechanics of domestic surveillance while distributing legal and financial risk away from the government agencies conducting the searches.
Primary Sources
- Source: Google News (Surveillance State)
- Category: Surveillance State
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
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